


Malaphor

by lygrim



Series: Idiomatic [2]
Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Unexpected Confessions, feeeeeeelingggggggggs, just kiss already..., more emotional baggage, shouting now sex later, unintended confessions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 17:14:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15124142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lygrim/pseuds/lygrim
Summary: Malaphor: An error of language where two idioms are merged together. Alternatively: a conjoining of two figures of speech usually with a nonsensical result, where meaning can be found regardless...Roxanne has been very patient. (Not really.)





	Malaphor

**Author's Note:**

> Ho boy! 
> 
> You're probably going to want to read/re-read Soliloquy before this one for Maximum Feels. On that note, thanks for everyone who read/kudos'ed/commented on Soliloquy, I really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoy this continuation! This story is unbeta'ed but I'm pretty happy with where it ended up, and I hope you are too! It's going to earn a rating in the next chapter...
> 
> ______________________

If nothing else, he has always been predictable.

Every year for the last four years, around noon on Thanksgiving day, he comes to get her. He leaves himself time to let her wake up and stage her how he wants her for the regularly scheduled villainous plot (generally with a focus on or at least alluding to the injustices done to indigenous peoples, which wins him so many more points with her than if he just made a giant mechanical turkey or made it rain molten cranberry sauce).

Knowing this routine, she makes sure she’s in her apartment at midday, with the doors and windows locked and booby-trapped (because she might admire his message, but heaven forbid she go easy on him), and hunkers down to wait.

Half an hour passes.

An hour.

Two.

Five.

Every year for the last four years she’s been invited to her office Thanksgiving party with the expectation that she will be too busy being tied to a chair and providing scathing commentary to actually attend, and every year for the last four years that’s exactly what’s happened.

But not this year.  


She had dressed up for the kidnapping, wearing her second favorite dress (the sleek purple one with the ‘dare you to peek’ neckline) and black peep-toe pumps. An hour after the party began and long after she was expecting to wake up in a burlap bag, she mutters angrily that she should have spared herself the trouble and grabs her keys.

When she steps in to conference room at the office, all conversation cuts off at once. Every eye in the room is on her, and Roxanne gets a queasy feeling in her stomach at the surprised and anxious looks on her co-worker’s faces. Hal is the only one who seems happy to see her, calling her name and raising a red plastic cup from his spot by the punch. Her boss blocks him from sight, coming up to her and gently asking for a word.

She follows him numbly away from the conference room towards the elevators, and already knows what he’s going to say.

“Rit- Roxy.” he says, “Roxy, we’re uh… glad you were able to make it this year. We thought you’d be… otherwise involved.”

“So did I.” She said woodenly. “But I’m not. So I decided to take you up on the invitation.”

“Roxy…” he sighs and scratches the back of his balding head.

“Roxanne.” She bites out. Bert is the kind of man who just calls everyone by their last name, like he never outgrew his dreams of being a little league baseball coach. Definitely preferable to being called ‘Roxy’, especially since she’s only been saying this to everyone in the office since she started working here seven years ago. If he’s going to do this to her he’s going to do her the courtesy of using her damn name. “I prefer Roxanne.”

He stares at her mournfully, and lets out an aggravated sigh.

“... I can’t do this. I’m gonna give it to you straight, Ritchi: the thing is, you shouldn’t have come. It’d be best if you went home.” He lays it out bluntly, arms crossed over his chest.

“You shouldn’t have invited me to the office party if you didn’t actually want me to come, Bert.” Roxanne replies stonily.

“Everyone’s invited, Ritchi. And it’s not that I don’t want you to come, it’s just…”

“It’s just that I, in particular, will be asked to go home if I actually show up.”

Bert frowns at her. “C’mon, Ritchi. That’s not the way of things and you know it.”

Roxanne grits her teeth. “That’s exactly what’s HAPPENING here, Bert.”

He gives her a droll look. ‘Yeah, I know, but c’mon, you’re smarter than this.’ “Yes, everyone is invited to the office party, and yes, I AM asking you to go home. You get kidnapped on the regular by a goddamn supervillain. On holidays in particular. I don’t want to be collateral damage if he comes here for you, you get me? This is for the safety of everyone in this building. You understand that, right?” He asks the question like a father, trying to make sure she knows right from wrong.

Roxanne pursed her lips at him, deeply embittered. “Somehow this arrangement never seemed to trouble you when it was just my health and safety at risk. Do you suppose that had anything to do with our ratings skyrocketing?”

Bert’s brows snap down over his eyes.  “We have spoken repeatedly and at length about what the studio can do to help you. We have made every accomodation we can. You have more available sick days and a better health insurance plan than anyone in this building, not to mention the hazard pay. If you ever decide to go to a shrink for help with any of this, the studio will foot the bill. And finally, you’re the one who chose to run reports on your kidnappings. The studio made it very clear that covering Megamind and giving interviews was not required of you and that it wouldn’t negatively affect your job if you didn’t. So don’t you come at me with that bullshit, Ritchi. Not when you and I both know better.”

Roxanne opened her mouth to tell him he could fuck right off, when she realize... she didn’t really want to. Not to Bert, who had always played fair with her. Not when he was right.

In truth, she didn’t even want to be here. At her office. At this party. He was right about everything; it was safer and smarter for her to stay home, where no one could potentially get hurt (not that anyone ever did, mind you.) And if she wasn’t so mad that she had been stood up (stood up by a supervillain, god that sounded pathetic) and was now dressed up with literally nowhere to go, she would have already seen that and left. Without being shitty and unfair and _herself_ to her boss first.

Suddenly Roxanne was just very, very tired. She just wanted to go home, drink Pinot Noir out of a mug, watch crime dramas with bad special effects and forget that she was alone.

She rubbed her face, realized late that she’d probably smeared her dramatic smokey eye to hell. Whatever, she was about to eat her pride anyway. 

“I’m sorry, Bert. You’re right, I know you’re right, and yeah, I’ll go home. It’s just…” she flapped her hand uselessly, that universal gesture of ‘everything is awful and I’m just so fucking done’.

“It’s just a shit deal. I know Ritchi, and despite every perk and exclusive you get, I don’t envy you a bit.” Bert commisserated, face stoic but sympathetic. “Hey, wait here for a minute, will ya? Don’t leave yet, I’ll be right back.”

“O-okay?” She watched him hustle down the hall, not bothering to wait for her answer. She waited a beat after he disappeared back into the conference room, the open door letting a swell of conversation and laughter into the hall before muffling again.

God, she’d really just… gone off on him. Didn’t let the reality of the situation stop her from picking the most biting, backstabbing snipe she could and leveling it at someone who didn’t deserve it. Jesus, just like her mother.

And oh fuck, any minute now she could be expecting a call from her, complaining about not seeing her on the TV this year.

It had been a standing tradition for the extended family to watch the evil plots at holiday gatherings and offer extended commentary the whole damn time, usually at her expense, and then for her mom to call her the next day and regale her _at length_ about her family’s tasteless observations of their regularly scheduled entertainment, the lack of which this year her mother would no doubt blame her for.

The best part of the recurring holiday plots was that she had a bullet-proof pass to skip out on these Hallmark family moments.

She gritted her teeth and punched the call button for the elevator with a little more aggression than was strictly necessary.

The elevator had arrived and she was stepping inside when the sounds of her coworkers spilled back into the hall, and Bert came hustling back with a paper plate covered in Saran wrap. “Hold the door, Ritchi!”

She did, and when he came within reach he pushed the plate -laden with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and a dinner roll- into her hands.

“You might as well get something out of this.” He told her gruffly.

Roxanne stared at him, speechless. Her eyes prickled, teared up. Pain and guilt and relief and gratitude closed her throat.

“Oh, god, not the teary eyes. Get out of here with that.” He ducked into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby for her. “See you Monday, Ritchi.”

She couldn’t even whisper a thank you. She decided, though, as the doors closed and the floors flashed down, one by one, that he was absolutely getting a box of donuts. The really good, cream-filled ones.

So that was it. Roxanne went home. She turned off her phone, she left her shoes at the door and her dress in the hallway, put her good-will leftovers in the fridge to eat in the morning. She poured wine in a mug and went to her favorite chair by the windows, curled up in her underwear with her knees to her chin and her afghan around her shoulders to ward of the chill. As night fell she watched the starlight crash down into the cityscape, and told herself she was worth something.

\--------------------

Nothing happens through December. No spot kidnappings, nothing. He doesn’t even come for her on Christmas Eve, and while Roxanne as a rule did not enjoy being kidnapped, Christmas was the one time of the year that she could say she had actual fun. He went out of his way to go over-the-top and have fun with the season even though she knew he didn’t particularly care for it. It was like he was trying to make it up to her that she was strapped to a chair Christmas Day instead of with her family (little did he know…)

It was like the kidnapping was a gift every year. His Christmas gift for her.

This year she stayed home and reluctantly took calls from her family, Facetimed with her mom, explained that ‘no, it’s too late to catch a flight there, you know what travelling on Christmas is like’.

The third worst part was having to apologize for _not_ getting kidnapped, as though she was doing it on purpose just to deny them their fun; as if any of it had ever, ever had anything to do with them.

The second worst part was hearing Aunt Lynn sniff and mutter ‘Surprised it took the alien four years to figure out she’s not worth the trouble’ in the background. (Lynn had always been a fucking bitch.)

She made her excuses quickly after that, fighting to be heard over the joyous shrieking of her nieces and nephews and the crooning of Burl Ives.

After that she began her own Yuletide festivities; mechanically chewing through a pint of Cherry Garcia and watching forensic anthropologists mess around with gruesomely rendered human remains until she couldn’t keep her eyes open and her brain was in a hum of detached numbness.

That night she dreamt. She burned the world and then walked naked through smoke and starlight, trying to catch the trailing fingers of someone who was just always out of reach, someone she longed for with her whole heart.

She spent Christmas Day hurting, alone, and chasing phantoms at the corners of her vision. It was the worst Christmas she’d had in years.

\---------------------

She didn’t even expect anything for New Years. It was a longshot; he didn’t usually do New Years, it was too soon after Christmas.

(She was mad at herself when it hurt anyway. When she discovered some quiet, treacherous part of her had still been hoping without her permission. She shouldn’t care- it shouldn’t hurt her because _she shouldn’t care_ . It’s not like she _wants_ to be kidnapped!)

\---------------------

(The worst part is that he’s still running plots without her. They’re more infrequent and they’re not as inspired; he’s obviously not putting much pride or care into them, but he’s still-- he’s just... it’s been two months.)

 

  (… Why isn’t she good enough anymore?)

\---------------------

Her assignments have been getting notably more lackluster over the last few months, and she knows it’s because she’s not getting prime post-scheme interviews anymore. (She hates that her professional merit is dependent on being used as a _damsel_ , god fucking dammit is there anything about her he _doesn’t touch--_ )

She still gets dibs on covering Megamind’s escapades though, and cover them she does. Covers every explosion and failed invention and plume of smoke, and every arrest. The day she gets close enough to ask him questions she asks where he’s been, what he’s planning. Now that she’s there, there’s no avoiding her. Surely he’ll talk to her, right?

He turns away from her. His eyes skate off her, he goads Metroman, he antagonizes the arresting officers until they stuff him into a squad car, literally anything but acknowledge her existence.

\---------------------

She takes Valentines Day off. She can’t do it. She knows what’s going to happen and she can’t stand the idea of doing fluff pieces. Not today.

So. Suffice it to say Roxanne doesn’t have anything that passes as Valentine’s Day plans. Not when her heart is rending in her chest and all she feels like doing is ripping apart her calendar and slashing out every pre-printed sanctimonious fucking holiday therein with a black Sharpie and spite.  

She spends the day drinking rather a lot of wine, avoiding her phone, and burning the months of November, December and January in her bathroom sink.

\---------------------

People have started to speculate about him avoiding her. It’s hitting rag mags and social media. She tries so hard to avoid it, but fucking Hal drags it to her anyway, laughing. ‘Look, Roxaroo, people think it’s like, so sad that freak isn’t kidnapping you anymore! And it’s like, psh, you’re so much better off now, who wants to be kidnapped, what’s their problem? Isn’t that so funny? Aren’t people so stupid? Hahahahaha!’ And she has to play along, laugh it off, haha how silly, yeah, who would want that, haha? Things are so much better now that she’s being categorically ignored, now that her whole life is slowly going to shit, now that she’s realized that she’s a pathetic excuse for a person who feels bad about not getting kidnapped anymore, now that she’s spiraling the existential drain with the removal of one key person from her life, HAHAHAHAHAHA. Isn’t it just. So. Silly?

\---------------------

It’s bad enough the first time he does it. She spends her lunch break having a nervous breakdown in a supply closet.

 

The next day he does it again. Roxanne has to pretend that talking about Megamind is too taxing for her delicate nerves, and then deal with the fallout of fostering a new-found sense of patronizing gallantry in Hal. This whole situation is just the gift that keeps on giving.

\---------------------

It finally happens on March 20th. She steps into a cloud of knock-out gas on her way to work and wakes up bound to a chair with a burlap bag on her head. Her hair is sticking to her forehead and her face is dewy, and ugh; it’s been five months, they could at least have washed the bag.

Without ceremony the burlap is pulled off her and she blinks against the banks of flashing lights on his console. He’s standing with his back to her, fiddling with buttons, adjusting the camera angle on a monitor. She can’t see any of his skin aside from the sliver of blue crown peeking over his collar.

Everything feels just the same; her chair, the rope on her wrists, the damp cold of his Lair. As though nothing’s changed. Like the last five months never happened. If she can just play along, maybe it will all go back to normal. If she can keep her feelings together and seperate, maybe she can make it alright again.

Roxanne searches for the perfect pithy comment for the situation. Unfortunately, she’s not the same Roxanne she was five months ago, and it doesn’t come to her quickly enough.  

Megamind sets the deathtrap (some kind of drill, Roxanne’s not really paying much attention) and starts the broadcast. He addresses his live studio audience (Wayne, and whoever happens to be in the general vicinity) with the same dramatic pauses and over-the-top gestures he always does, but to Roxanne it's like he's speaking French, and she can scarcely understand one word out of twelve.

He keeps his back to her while he paces and talks, which wouldn't normally be anything, except he hasn't said a word to her, except he started the broadcast without so much as a warning. When he finally does get around to acknowledging her, it's to present her to the camera as 'Metroman's girlfriend'. Not Roxanne, not Miss Ritchi. She's still getting over her confusion and disappointment with that when he says, "-will be the last! By the time you get here, your nosy girlfriend will be dead, because it seems you have a conflicting engagement!"

Megamind presses a button and Roxanne hears 'Mother!' from the speakers on the control panel, so apparently Lady Scott is in danger somewhere, which is good because it gives her extra time before Wayne gets here to get her fucking head together-- she jumps in her seat when something brushes her bare shoulder and stares up at Minion, hunched over her left side.

"Excuse me, Miss Ritchi." He murmurs apologetically, barely louder than Megamind monologuing in the background. "I just wanted to say goodbye while I have the chance. It's been a pleasure abducting you."

Roxanne's mouth worked noiselessly for a second before she came up with something to say. "Thank you... I think... but after four years I rather doubt Megamind is going to manage to kill me today."

"What? No, that's to promote a sense of urgency. I mean I don't believe I'll be seeing you again." Minion shoots a furtive glance at Megamind's caped back and leans in closer to whisper to her. "He wanted to give you a bit of a last hurrah before committing to a different strategy. This is going to be the last time we-- he. Kidnaps you."

Minion cringes back in the corner of her vision at the strangled shriek she makes in response, but she's already locked on target  when Megamind FINALLY turns towards her, leveling a quelling look at Minion. "Keep her quiet, will you? I'm trying to break Metroman's spirit here."

"You're going to stop kidnapping me?!" She's on camera, she's on camera and she feels like screaming, she's on camera and she's going to cry, she's on camera and she's going to kill him--

"Mignon!" Megamind thunders. "Dammit, you soggy invertibrate, step away from her before you tell her my social security number as well!"

"We don't have social security numbers..." Minion sulks, deflating as he steps away.

Megamind points a finger at him like it's a ray gun and howls "GO!". The console behind him is flaring with lights and an image of a scowling Metroman and a gale of heroic threats coming from that stupidly idyllic face and he's really going to cut her out of the game?! After four years?! After the last five months?!! AND HE'S DOING IT LIKE THIS?!!!!

 

"Turn them off," she says stiffly. No one acquiesces; Minion is arguing and Megamind is gesturing. "Turn the cameras off!" She tries again. Metroman is shouting over the comms now. They're just like boys on a school yard, ignoring her. Her eyes swim with tears. She can't do this on camera, she can't, she can't she can't she can't the three of them are yelling and can't hear her and she has had enough!

"TIME OUT!" She screams. For the first time, she screams in that chair. And then a tear escapes and she's crying as well.

There's a half second of silence in which she tries not to sob. She tucks her face against her shoulder, humiliation washing over her. Wayne gets halfway through saying her name before the broadcast is cut off. Megamind gives quiet instructions for Minion to go check on Lady Scott. The hiss of hydraulics moves away, a door opens and closes, there is absolute silence.

Megamind hesitates. There's the sound of casters rolling across the floor, the creak of leather as he sits down across from her.

"What are you doing?"

Roxanne barks out a hysterical laugh and loses it, whipping around to face him. Her tears burn on her cheeks. "What am I doing?! What are YOU doing?! What the fuck, Megamind! What is this, you cast me aside for FIVE MONTHS without a word, bring me back just to tell me you're letting me go like some-- some badly scripted television drama?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

He's been steadily recoiling into his seat, wide eyed. His fingers are digging into the armrest and he's got one leg off the floor as if he thinks he'll need it to ward her off.

"I- I thought you would be happy," he says weakly, sounding confused, the absolute jackass.

"HAPPY?!” She shrilled, digging her nails into the armrests. “People have been talking about it for months! It's 'Roxanne Ritchi' this and 'Oh, but it's sort of sad' that, and 'It's kind of like watching celebrities break up'!" Megamind chokes at this point, but she's got five months of unvented anger behind her and she’s not done yet. "My own mother won't leave me alone about it! 'Roxanne, watching you get kidnapped was the highlight of family gatherings, what did you say to that alien? Fix it, won't you, it's so dull now that we can't talk about you being tied to a chair over a pit of spikes!' And! And I'm a laughingstock at work! Do you know what I'm reporting on now that I'm not getting interviews with you?!"

"Dog shows and charity runs?" He says weakly, still looking terrified.

"No! I have to cover dog shows and-- oh. Wait, what?"

"Three in the morning time slots is insulting after the work you've put in." He supplies helpfully, un-wincing a little. "You should talk to your department head. You deserve better than to be disrespected like this."

Roxanne sucked in a breath, surprised and vindicated and a little bit… warmed?

Nope! No no no no! No warm and fuzzies, he doesn’t get to be sympathetic after all the crap he’s put her through!

"What I deserve is an explanation! Where have you been?! Why are you ignoring me?! And when are you going to start kidnapping me again because holy fuck, for as inconvenient as the surprise sedations and being dangled over alligators is, this is even _worse_ , so put it back!”

“I… I can’t.” He says. _Mournfully_. Sincerely, actually seeming regretful, as if he wasn’t planning on dropping her like a hot brick.

“... Oh?” Roxanne quirks an eyebrow. Her anger and hysteria seem to just… leech out of her. No, that’s not right. It just coalesces, into something cold and patient. “Why can’t you?”  
“First of all, you’re making no sense,” he starts off, throwing his hands up and rocking back in his chair in the same movement. “Why would you ask me to keep going? You just said you didn’t like it! I thought you’d be relieved you didn’t have to sit here with me and do this anymore! You were supposed to be happy. Why aren’t you happy?” He asks. He looks almost wounded, as if the fact that she’s asking him to fix what he’s broken in her life is hurting him.

“You don’t get to decide how things will make me feel.” She tells him coldly. “And you don’t get to bend my words either. I didn’t say I don’t like it, I said it was inconvenient. But you didn’t answer my question. Why can’t you put us back the way we were?”

“I can’t. It just-- wouldn’t be appropriate.” He hedged, curling his shoulders in defensively, as if that spiked mantle could save him.

“Of all the things Evil would have regard for, I doubt propriety is one of them. Don’t bullshit me, that’s not the reason. Stop dodging and tell me.”

He bristled, mouth crimping down tight on a frown. “I thought I would be better off with an actual damsel.” He challenged, throwing the slight down like a gauntlet.

“A bullshitter and a liar,” she shot back. “You’re holding back still, I see it in you. Tell me.”

“Pushy reporter! Why must you always be so difficult?!” He snarled at her, leaning forward into her space.

“Why are you avoiding my question like a coward?!” She snaps, almost bumping noses with him.

“Why do you want to be here so badly?!” He shouts, rising slowly out of his chair as if making himself seem bigger is going to intimidate her. “Why would you want this?! Tell me that, Roxanne, because I really don’t see why you would willingly subject yourself to this--” he drawls, gesturing more at himself than at the room, “So enlighten me won’t you?”

Roxanne seethes, trembling in her chair. Something is cracking inside her, something that’s been straining inside her since November and is about to break, and she has no idea what it is or what she’s about to do because of it, but it pounds in her heart like it’s trying to escape and it bubbles in the back of her throat like flame, and whatever she’s about to say has the power to level this whole section of her life and she’s afraid and she’s burning inside and she’s used her words to set the tinder down and she’s about to strike a match and let it fall. So she lets it fall.

“I want to be with YOU!” She shouts it out, and then chokes in shock. Her declaration doesn’t just hang in the air between them; the Lair grabs it up in every greedy corner and throws it back at her. The air hums with energy.

Megamind… oh god, Megamind. His eyes are widening in slow-motion, staring at her in abject horror. Roxanne just spat out all her flame; it’s gone, there’s nothing to ward off the cold that look puts in her chest.

“Oh,” she breathes. Oh no.


End file.
